Mummy mystery

A 2014 paper in PLOS ONE has revealed that a mysterious mummy that had languished in German collections for over a century was once an Incan woman who…Read More »

was killed with several strikes to the head, possibly in a ritual murder. Less «

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Mummy braids

Credit: Panzer et al, PLOS ONE 2014

The mummy wore hair bands made of alpaca and lllama hair, suggesting she came from South America.

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Distinctive Incan bones

Credit: Panzer et al, PLOS ONE 2014

The skulls also had charateristic "Wormian" bones often found on South American populations but not in European ones.

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Normal exterior

Credit: Panzer et al, PLOS ONE 2014

The mummy's face looked fairly normal from the outside, but inside, its skull bones were crushed

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Extensive damage

Credit: Panzer et al, PLOS ONE 2014

A closer look using a CT scan revealed that her frontal skull bones were completely smashed.

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Thickened heart wall

Credit: Panzer et al, PLOS ONE 2014

The mummy also showed signs of thickened heart wall and a distended bowel, which was probably caused by Chagas disease.

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body-ct-scan

Credit: Panzer et al, PLOS ONE 2014

Here, CT scans of the body of the Incan mummy

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Author Bio

Tia Ghose

Tia has interned at Science News, Wired.com, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and has written for the Center for Investigative Reporting, Scientific American, and ScienceNow. She has a master's degree in bioengineering from the University of Washington and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California Santa Cruz.